Critical Essay by Andrew K. Kennedy

In the following essay, Kennedy discusses Stoppard's moral and political satire in Jumpers, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, and Professional Foul.

To thy own self be true One and one is always two.

How many readers and theatre-goers would find the hall-marks of Tom Stoppard's verbal wit in those Peer Gyntian lines from Every Good Boy Deserves Favour? The lines are spoken rapidly by Alexander, the political prisoner detained in a "hospital," to his absent son; every word is meant, without ambiguity or irony either in the phrasing or in the situation; and the verse is a mnemonic, in case the prisoner is not allowed writing material "on medical grounds." This is only a local example of the remarkable change in Stoppard's comedy from...